


Something Worth Remembering

by achluophobia



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Enderman Hybrid Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Gaslighting, Gen, My First Work in This Fandom, Not Beta Read, Not RPF, Ranboo-centric (Video Blogging RPF), i prommy its not rpf, manipulation tactics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29499522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achluophobia/pseuds/achluophobia
Summary: There's a few things Ranboo should know about Endermen, intrinsically.There's a few things he forgot.Dream aims to remind him.-Not RPF. Based on SMP character lore only.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one + 2 set after feb 3 / 2021 stream.
> 
> Chapter 3 set after feb 15 / 2021 stream.

“You probably can’t even remember my face, huh?”

Ranboo winces. He’s not sure why. Not this time. Dream’s voice and his tone and judgements had made him grit his teeth and try to hide away over and over.

But that one hurt.

Why did it hurt?

“Come on, Ranboo. Really?”

The voice laughed softly as the lanky teenager seemed to shrink even more, covering his eyes with his hands and looking at nothing. He wished he could close them and not see anything. He wished he didn’t have the same clear eyelid a lizard would. Niki told him the name of it, once. He forgot to write it down, but he felt like he knew at some point. He wished he was normal, though, could close his eyes and be awash in darkness and block everything out.

“What am I supposed to - we’ve never met,” he replies, laughing nervously, “Not… not like that, I mean - I’ve - you’ve never taken your mask off in front of me.” _Have you?_ He wanted to add.

He wasn’t sure why he was so unsure about that of all statements. He had resigned himself to all of the other things he’d been accused of, but that one just brought a genuine confusion. Static in the back of his head that made his skin itch. Dream laughed again, and Ranboo gave a keening cry, moving his hands to his ears and staring at the floor. He hated that laugh. It was familiar now. Too familiar, and it always had been, despite his weak internal denial against that fact. It made his chest ache and his eyes water and his body tighten up and -

“You know that’s not true, Ranboo. Don’t you remember? Come on. Just guess. What do you think I look like?” It was mocking him. The porcelain, split down the horizontal, hastily taped together with peeling adhesives and glues, was _mocking_ him. A facsimile of the smile he _knew_ the vision of Dream was sporting underneath, could hear in its voice. Could almost envision through the porcelain as the hunter crouched in front of the nervous Enderman’s face.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know! _I don’t even know who you are!_ ”

Dream sighed. He stood, and examined the jittery teen on the floor.

“You used to.” Is its - no, his - reply. Something in the way he said it, almost a distant reminiscing tone, was far too human to keep applying the guise of object to. “You used to be my best friend. I’m just trying to help you.” The words sounded hollow in Ranboo’s head, bouncing around and leaking out like nothing was even said. He couldn’t hear this. He didn’t _want_ to.

“Please,” Ranboo whined softly. “Please stop it already. Get out of my head.”

“O-kayyy. If you wanted to talk using your voice, you should have said so already.” Dream rocked on his heels, watching expectantly.

Ranboo jolted at that. His voice? Hadn’t he been speaking? The itchy feeling on the back of his neck was becoming unbearable as Dream stared down at him. Moving a hand away from his ears, he tentatively touched a claw to his lips. Dry. Too chapped to pull apart without cracking. He looked up at the hunter, finally, eyes wide and wild. Dream only met his gaze through the mask, understanding instantly the disconnect. Why Ranboo wouldn’t understand his phrasing. Dream stared for one second, before grinning, beginning to genuinely laugh. A wheezy, choppy thing that made Ranboo’s heart hurt.

“You _forgot_ Endermen are telepathic?” Dream managed, trying not to laugh himself to death. “Seriously, you’re the only one hearing any of this! All those ones you ‘spoke’ to, you never once realised?” 

Ranboo could feel his heart pounding in his ears, slowly, as he realised Dream’s voice wasn’t rattling around in the back of his skull anymore. Was coming through his hearing. _He never noticed?_

“I-“ he began, licking his dried lips as he finally spoke, instead of just whimpering, “I didn’t even know I could pick up things like they did until a few days ago,” he managed, giving a small, tense laugh, his anxieties running wild. “I’m not great at remembering, you know that already. It’s not like I know everything about myself, how should I know that I’m not just imagining things-“

“We’re getting off topic.”

Ranboo snapped back to focus, silent, his pupils narrowing to pinpricks even with how wide his eyes were. Dream rolled his eyes, though Ranboo couldn’t even see it, he felt it in the way Dream shifted his weight around. “You haven't even made a guess. Come on, Ranboo. What’s in that long-term memory, huh? What’s under my mask? You know the answer. I’d be really disappointed if you can’t even guess my eye color.”

“I don’t like meeting people’s eyes,” he mumbled, looking back to the floor. “I don’t know. I don’t… I don’t know. Your eyes - your eyes…” he trailed off, under the expectant glare of Dream. He wouldn’t know, would he-? Ranboo felt a sinking feeling in his chest as he wracked his memory, his skin itching and body tense. 

“They’re blank. K-kind of, maybe… purple… and blank like an-“

Dream clapped his hands together, making the younger boy jolt. “You do remember me!”

_Why? When had he seen Dream’s face? Voluntarily looked at it, met the man’s eyes?_  
_He wouldn’t do that... Right?_

“I was about to really lose hope,” Dream murmured, in a softer tone than Ranboo was used to. “I thought you didn’t remember how close we used to be.” 

Ranboo shivered. Something about that pulled at his heart, and that scared him. _Dream is the reason,_ he recalled, remembering the signs around him in that little room. The ones he’d written so long ago. It felt like such a long time since he'd holed up in there after Doomsday. He still remembered what they said - as opposed to the some things he’d write down. Dream seemed to know what he was thinking about, even from the way Ranboo’s fingers twitched. Like he wanted to write again.

“Your book. Again. You thought it would be here. You have way too many, in my opinion. What is that, the fourth? You really should condense those things. Your memory isn’t good enough to have more than one with your hoarding tendencies. Seriously…” He teased, tilting his head. 

“How - you don’t know what that is. You’re lying. I couldn’t find it in my chests. It’s not there.”

“You could always go just… across the room and check.”

“No, no. No. I’m staying right here until you go away. You’re not even real. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

He was crouched in his basement. Under the dirt, inbetween the sugarcane. He thought… he thought it was safe here. That the voice couldn’t reach him. Why could it reach him? There was no way. No way. Absolutely no way Dream was speaking to him from this distance. Even if he didn’t feel like his brain was being rattled around anymore, Dream’s voice was unnatural in the space, blocking out the drip of water and chatter of his pets. He could hear it… and nothing else. Even if Dream's voice came through his hearing, it felt strange, not coming from the man himself, just emanating like an aura of sound.

 _Endermen are telepathic._ _Endermen are **telepathic**._

He felt like his heart was going to give out.

“Come on, Ranboo,” Dream replied simply, letting his shoulders drop a little. “Would you stop fighting me? We used to be friends.”

The young Enderman clicked his tongue, licking at his lips again. He hated when Dream used that tone. Like he cared, like they really… like they really had been friends at some occasion. He hated talking to Dream at all anymore, but sometimes he wished it was just the teasing. Just the derealization, so he could write it off every time as just a voice in his head. Just as fake as the memories everyone tried to convince him of.

“Look. Here. I’ll let you see my face again. Just this once. But you better not forget again.”

Ranboo’s body shot to stiffness, his spine straightening instantly as he looked up at Dream. He had never offered that before. 

“No… I don’t… I don’t want to see. I’m not one of your friends,” he gasped, suddenly feeling like he couldn’t breathe. Like his lungs were filled with cotton as his chest constricted. He felt his eyes burning, and he felt numb in all his limbs. And a tiny part of his subconscious reminded him that the panic rising wasn’t just from fear. It was the same feeling he got when overwhelmed with emotion, overcome and trying to not cry at being treated well, treated like he was a friend. A pull at his heartstrings. _This wasn’t being treated well, so why did it remind him of it?_

“We’re not friends. Please. Please go away.”

Dream didn’t speak, for once, watching as tears seared rashes into the Enderman’s cheek. He wondered if Ranboo even noticed it that time, or if he was too tense to even understand he was crying. Dream didn’t comment, but that was somehow worse, standing in silence as he undid the buckles holding the mask on. 

“Stop, stop - I don’t -“ Ranboo hiccuped.

Dream seemed almost unhappy, but he shrugged, and pulled the mask off anyway, crouching down. He hadn’t done it in such a long time, taking it off in front of another person. Not since even before the first war, not since the smile was cracked into the smooth surface. “Look at me,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes. _“Ranboo, look at me.”_

He wasn’t asking nicely anymore.

Ranboo could feel his body shiver despite the comfortable warmth of the basement, his expressive ears on high tension. The finned one pressed to his head, the membranes stretched thin as it fanned out as much as possible, and the other, more elfen ear, perked up in alert. He tried to breathe, his lungs burning and throat dry, and his eyes wide, wide open, even though he wasn’t looking at anything at all. He tried to look away, and Dream seemed… unimpressed. Leaning in and grabbing Ranboo’s chin, the boy jolted sharply as he was snapped back to reality. And already, Dream was tilting the boy’s head back, forcing Ranboo to stare him down.

He wasn’t that strange looking. No, he’d turned out _almost_ perfectly human looking, but the pale lilac of his eyes was the biggest tell to his heritage. Everything else was easy to hide. Scars littered his face, blackened and rough. His cheeks and his neck were covered in patches of the strange scales Ranboo was too familiar with to misunderstand. Honestly, it trailed all over his whole body, but he dressed carefully to hide any evidence that he may be different to his human friends. Ranboo hadn’t gotten that privilege with how obvious his hybridism was. Dream was lucky he could hide the physical, but the mental was different. And he used it to his advantage, of course. He used that fact he could talk simply through his thoughts, and he stared down the younger hybrid despite the sudden rush of information that came from it. That was the worst part of making Ranboo look at him - receiving back all of those rapid, circling thoughts, all of those worries and hurt and fear. But Dream had _practice_ \- had years of working through the mental overload that came from making eye contact. Practice focusing his projective thoughts down into a few simple things to repeat and layer and convince. Dream knew how this worked. Ranboo, however… 

Well, Ranboo started screaming.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was nice - feeling like he had people he could trust. He was lucky they lived so close by, could hear when he couldn't handle being alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter, and the next will be the shortest one.

“........boo? Ranboo? Mate?” 

He didn’t remember blacking out, but he did wake up the instant he heard a voice. He shot into a standing position almost involuntarily - though the sudden bloodrush nearly knocked him over again. He heard someone move, maybe, and catch him before he took a nosedive into the sugarcane aqueduct. _That would have hurt,_ he thought with a dry laugh, looking down into the water. 

“Relax, mate! You almost passed out from just standing up?”

 _Oh._ Ranboo blinked, looking up to see a yukata-sleeved arm holding him up. _Philza._

“Ranboo? Can you speak?”

“Sorry… I…” he trailed off, trying to plant his feet more firmly. His head hurt. More than it had any of the other times he blacked out. He couldn’t remember why, but his eyes burned, like he had stared at the sun. He felt like his knees were going to give out, even as he tried to take the burden of his weight off of Phil. At least he hadn’t gone anywhere strange. 

“... Why are you… um, in my basement? Sorry, I don’t mean to lean on your arm,” he added, before rambling on. He phrased it wrong, was all; “Er, well - I guess I’m just renting, so it’s your basement —“

For a moment, he wondered if he’d even gotten permission to build it. He couldn’t remember ever showing Phil around, or telling anyone he’d made it-

“You were screaming your head off, kid. How about we head back upstairs? If you can make it up the ladder, yeah?”

Ranboo’s voice caught. _Screaming?_ Slowly, he nodded. Fresh air would be good. And the cold always sharpened out his senses. He let himself be lead around the sugarcane and random chests, though his skin itched when he looked at them. He had the urge to dig through them all, suddenly, but Phil seemed not to notice, waiting expectantly by the ladder. The Enderman licked his lips nervously, before pulling himself upstairs, followed by Philza. They were greeted by the sight of Technoblade standing in the doorway of the little shack Ranboo called home, his axe at his hip, and… the three cats circling his hooved feet. 

“They were yowlin’ at the door,” he offered, awkwardly, to Ranboo’s confused look. “I was keepin’ watch.” 

Right. Ranboo was passed out, he couldn’t protect his pets if he was asleep. He wondered, momentarily, if he had to fix up a little house for them. 

“It’s snowing,” was all the Enderman managed, still wobbly on his feet as he tried to walk towards the door. “Must be… cold, standing out there,” he added, though he winced at the obvious comment. The cats seemed to perk at hearing his voice, and ran over - swarming and meowing at his feet. Trying not to keel over, he picked up the most tolerant of the cats, Enderchest.

“I like the cold,” was Techno’s simple response, shrugging. 

“So you should come in the house, Ranboo. It’s warmer with us, ay mate?” Philza offered an arm for the tall boy to lean on, and gave Techno a sharp look before the hybrid could even protest. The piglin huffed, and glanced back towards his house, stepping out of the doorway. He didn't want Ranboo to get the idea they were _friends_ or anything, but Phil was always hard to argue with.

“No, I… I don’t mean to intrude…”

“Come on, Ranboo. You need to get out of your house more.” 

Ducking his head in acceptance, the taller hybrid let himself be lead around, his cats tailing after the group of three as they entered Technoblade’s house. Techno and Philza quickly resumed chatting casually, as he sat in their livingroom. It was nice - feeling like he had people he could trust. He was lucky they lived so close by, could hear when he couldn't handle being alone. Someone to help when he was lost in nightmares.

… Nightmares?

… He wondered if he was forgetting something important.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Best Friend
> 
> :)

_**Best friend  
Best friend  
Your fault  
All your fault  
Free me free me free me  
Let me out  
You can do it  
Ranboo  
My friend my friend my friend  
TRAITOR YOU LIED YOU DID THIS TO ME  
LIAR  
ALL YOUR FAULT  
FRAMED FRAMED FRAMED  
LET ME OUT  
Free me** _

_**Best friend** _

_**:)** _

—————-

Ranboo woke up with a start, in his bed at home. It had been weeks, weeks since he had sat with Techno and Phil, spent the night in their warm home before deciding to rebuild his shack into a proper little house. It was hard to remember even why he had been there, now. He just knew that ever since then, he’d had fitful sleep, even more than normal, waking up feeling like his heart was thrumming out of his chest nightly. Every night, he’d fall asleep and wake up in his home, though - that was his reassurance. Reassurance he wasn’t out wandering late again, Ender-walking without his waking knowledge. He couldn’t be - he was always in his home, where he remembered going to sleep. … where he told himself he fell asleep. At least, he tried to convince himself it was impossible for the strange phenomenon to have continued. Even so, as sleep faded when he sat up, so did the last lingering memories of strange visions in his sleep. 

Ranboo pursed his lips, closing his eyes and trying to recall what it was, every time, that he couldn’t remember. It _felt_ like a nightmare, the way he woke every night in a cold sweat, his eyes burning like he’d stared at nothing for hours without blinking, like he’d stared into the sun itself, and his heart feeling ready to burst. But he couldn’t ever remember why. Something was in his memory every night that never lasted until morning, leaving him exhausted and sluggish no matter how early he rolled into bed. How strange.

He looked to the wall of signs he’d placed, a short to-do list despite the wall being covered in blank ones, tilting his head as he read the only two written instructions again. _Stop Conflict_ , read one, and in a slightly different handwriting he couldn’t recognize, _Figure Out What You Don’t Know :)_. Idly, he wondered when he’d written that one, heavyhanded and rough compared to his usually neat lettering. Maybe he was just stressed at the time. The smile caught his eye, despite how he tried to avoid looking at it, and he could only make vague guesses as to why he felt like he forgot something, somewhere… he wondered what it was. 

He wondered why he felt like his nightmares were the same every night.

He wondered… why he was so exhausted, his arms sore and eyes aching.

He wondered why he wanted a best friend again.

>[Awesamdude joined the Game.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this is really too short to be its own chapter but i couldnt just tack it onto ch2. it was originally only a single paragraph but the 15ths stream gave me a bit more to work with on this idea, so. vindication!


End file.
